


Holidays Dear

by jehanna



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Christmas, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28632108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehanna/pseuds/jehanna
Summary: Farren brings the Christmas she never had to Underworld, for the only people on the earth who can remember it.Fallout secret santa gift.
Relationships: Charon (Fallout)/Female Lone Wanderer, Charon/Willow (Fallout), Female Lone Wanderer/Willow
Kudos: 11





	Holidays Dear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radioaktiv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioaktiv/gifts).



“...Uh.” Willow takes a deep breath of her cigarette, blows it slowly, stalling to find words. “Not what I expected when you two went out and refused to say why.”

Charon only grunted in return, subtly adjusting his shoulder, which she worried would rip out of it’s socket any moment now. Not wanting him to wait anymore and have to put up with it longer, she nods him inside and does so again to the metal-suited woman carrying the other end of an impressively large pine tree that managed to still have most of its needles. Cross, was it? Willow didn’t trust those Brotherhood people one bit, had taken too many potshots from them before, had killed a few. But the woman smiled and winked at her, and Farren had cryptically said she was closer to them than her human coworkers, though she had no idea what that meant. She could stay, but she was being watched.

“Are you coming inside too?”

“Baby, I have watch duty.”

“You can take a break, the pits over there have been empty for like a month! The muties haven’t had the numbers to repopulate it, I guess.”

Farren had a point, typical raiders and stragglers had been the most problems they had in quite some time, and they were few and in between at that. Maybe she could tell Cerberus to take her place…

“Alright, you’ve got me.” Willow chuckles, crams the cigarette into the concrete with her boot. “Only because I want to know what this sole surprise has been about.”

Inside, she’s immediately greeted with an unusual sight- several ghouls hover far but nearby, questioning and confused, but with a vague recognition and shock Willow very much feels herself. Charon and Cross are holding the tree upright as Winthrop drills something to hold it up into the ground. The only outlier is Tulip, practically bouncing on her heels. Not particularly shocking, she’s had this grin on her face for a week now, apparently knowing what this was all about.

It was like an...Oooooh.

Farren has this goofy smile when Willow asks to look at the map screen of her pip-boy, at the month and day specifically. Figures, she barely paid attention nowadays and the weather in D.C. hardly changed like she remembered it used to. She wouldn’t of known the date otherwise.

“I heard someone in the bar talking about missing Christmas, and I always wanted a tree but the vault didn’t have any...Sooo we’re having Christmas in Underworld! Which is, like, really ironic, given the origin of the holiday and name of this place and all.”

“Surprised you vault dwellers even know what it is…” Willow mumbles, mostly in an attempt to cover up her shock. The idea of celebrating, like she used to, so long ago she mostly only remembered vague symbols and the scent of cinnamon and cloves, the taste of chocolate on her tongue…

The second it was secured, Tulip was on it, tugging things out of a plastic bag. Stepping closer to see just what, she realized they were pictures cut out of multiple sources-- the spare copies of Paradise Lost, art leftover from the museum when it was functional, from the brochures and advertisements that still littered the floor in places. All Hell related too, which isn’t surprising and not at all Christmas-like, but hey, she admired the creativity. Backed with thicker printer paper, and paper clips bent and poked through to make them hang on the branches, make-shift ornaments.

“I figured it would be nice, since a lot of you guys can remember when it was actually a thing. Carol’s got a feast preparing upstairs.”

Just how many people were in on it? Not that Willow got to see or catch much gossip, being outside most of the time as she was…

Farren passes by her side, and she’s embarrassed she was so enraptured by the scene that she failed to notice a large box being placed down, power armor creaking as it went. Inside...it wasn’t in the best shape, the things within, broken or stained or tinted. But tinsel, ornaments, other decor that mostly survived the bombs…

“What? You think we spent all week just picking out a tree? We found an apartment building not too far outside the Mall, and it had a supply closet full of the stuff. Then there was a storage room in this super market...You know, bits and pieces.”

Willow looks up to Charon, for...something, not entirely sure what to do with herself. He’s too busy trying to wring out his shoulders, grunting as they crack, likely not feeling too well after hurling a big ass pine all the way back here.

“Well, you did good big guy.”

He still only grunts when she leans up to kiss his cheek lightly, but you know Charon well enough to be his lover, you learn to decode the variant grunts. He was being appreciative.

In the meantime, Willow decided not to let herself stall too much longer. When the hell was she ever gonna be able to celebrate a  _ holiday _ again?

* * *

“Higher!”

There’s only so far Charon’s arms extend, but Farren intends to use every bit of his strength. Whereas the very top of the tree only took someone on the upper floor to decorate, the middle had become a sort of free-for-all. Winthrop had the step-ladder, so Farren had to find an alternative method to decorate her respective side.

Charon tried to pretend he didn’t care much either way, but that’s not entirely true. It’s not like he was incapable of feeling, he wasn’t as oblivious to the world outside of him and his immediate circle as it would seem. Even if it was under bad circumstances, Underworld was a home and had been for decades now. These were his people, as far as he was concerned.

Hell, wasn’t like Christmas ever a big deal to himself back before the bombs, not that can he remember anyhow. An excuse for cheap drinks, maybe. And he’d rather favored the cold weather, before it became a survival hazard.

But...this was different, comfortable. And it was nice, to see everyone do something other than meander around and waste their years away cooped up in their glorified (and literal) basement. Even if he was, er, being their pack mule for now, he could reason it as a necessary sacrifice, one that had a much favorable outcome of bringing some kind of temporary happiness to the first place he ever remotely felt at home in.

And of course, Farren. Who was steadily and rapidly proving back to Charon that perhaps, yes, something so trivial and small was worth the effort. The kind of thing only someone left unjaded by the wasteland could think of, he assumed, someone who could look past the fight for survival. Living, not just surviving: at least Vault-Tec had, for even one vault, gotten that right. Or the people within, anyhow.

She shimmies, asscheek pressing his head to the side, and he has half a mind to bite it to make her move before he remembers they’re in public. Vaguely he recognizes he was supposed to be using his arm not supporting her to attach ornaments but really it was better to just stand and think, as he’d become rather accustomed to. Only so much you can do standing in the corner of a bar all day, it tends to stick with you. He thinks her wide-eyed optimism and unbridled joy would make a more appealing arrangement than he could ever manage, other than alternating colors and alternating heights in rigid, cold patterns.

He liked it, seeing what she created, making everything unmistakable Farren.

To look down and see the gentle, pleased smile on the remnants of Willow’s lips? To hear Farren laugh and tell him to move to the left, a hand tucked in the leftovers of his hair?

It was worth it.

* * *

It’s not the bright, glittering pyramid of white and green the pictures in books showed. There wasn’t a lush carpet underneath, shiny wrapped presents underneath. They had no functional lights, just the dim fluorescents that survived reflecting off of the ornaments and bobbles, peaking through the chipped paint and withering glitter left on them. They had everyone standing around, staring, admiring the work, a small speck of something new and meaningful to break up the one, two, three, uncountable decades many of them have spent reliving the same day and remembering when they didn’t.

Farren smiled, hands unknowingly raising to grip Charon and Willow’s in her own, more than a little proud of herself. The town that welcomed her, that led her to the two most important people in her life...it was worth it, a debt repaid, one she didn’t mind at all. Vault 101 may have exiled her, and James might be dead,

But she had family here. Something worth working for, to make the effort for, for their happiness.

“You don’t know how much this means to everyone,” Willow mumbles it into Farren’s hair, soft locks of ginger with a familiar scent, a splendid replacement for the peppermint and cinnamon of a time long gone. Charon’s heat beside the both of them is comfortable, like a hearth, protective and overbearing.

“Eh, I can kinda guess.” Farren could, everyone had an aura of them she’d never seen before, the little flecks of hope she felt, wished she could hand out in handfuls.

Not one for words, strong arms on her shoulders make Charon’s thanks, an undeniable sense of reverence and gratefulness.

Home, she thinks, grinning like a loon, as Cross bids farewell and Carol pardons everyone up the stairs, with the smell of Instamash complete with the rare, scavenged spices and Salisbury Steak unblemished from within an old vault. What concoctions have they made of all of... _ his _ liquor, she wonders?

Only one way to find out, Farren figures, walking hand-in-hand up the marble stairs to food and cheer, their own slice of heaven in a ruthless hell, with the loves she held dear.


End file.
